It's Friday again, kids, and you know what that means: it's time once again for AtAT's End-O'-Week Dose-O'-Paranoia! Because honestly, what's a weekend without frequent nervous glances over your shoulder and that little seed of doubt burning a hole through the bottom of your stomach? Heck, without those, you might as well relax until next week or some such crazy thing. What are we, hippies? Exactly. So get ready to sweat!

To start off, we should mention that when we first heard about the imminent report promoted by the Computer and Communications Industry Association a couple of days ago, we didn't mention it because to us it fell squarely into "Dog Bites Man" territory. You probably know about this thing, right? CNET revealed that the anti-Microsoft CCIA was about to publicize a new independent report "asserting that the software giant's dominance in key technologies threatens the national infrastructure." And sure, the whole national security spin on the topic is sorta juicy, we suppose, but when all's said and done, what we're talking about here on a fundamental level is a pack of geeks bellyaching about Microsoft-- which is about as rare as a one-headed, two-winged chicken with feathers. Not much drama to suck out of that sitch, and we know that our viewers, as discriminating drama hounds, demand better.

(Of course, we then regaled you instead with tales of how Motorola was selling something that turned out not to be its PowerPC business to someone that turned out not to be Apple, and it all wound up drier than a cracker-on-toast sandwich with a side of sawdust. What can we say? It's our deep-seated cluelessness about what we're doing two-thirds of the time that makes us so gosh-darned lovable.)

Anyway, the report did surface as expected, and it does indeed assert that Microsoft's "near ubiquity in personal computing" has rendered most computer networks-- including those of the U.S. government-- vulnerable to "massive, cascading failures." Oooh, nice! 9 out of 10 for style, but since we knew all this already, it's maybe a 4 from the East German judge for actual dramatic content, right? Except that the aftermath of the report's release is arguably a whole lot scarier than anything you'll find within its pages.

How's this for drama? Faithful viewer Dana Sutton slid us a Washington Post article revealing that the report's first-listed author, Daniel Geer, has apparently been unceremoniously stripped of his job at computer security firm @stake, Inc. where he had been the Chief Technical Officer. @stake released a statement that Geer is "no longer associated" with the firm and that his coauthorship of the CCIA report "was not sanctioned" by @stake and "the values and opinions of the report are not in line with [the firm's] views." This despite the fact that Geer and the other authors made it clear that "they were speaking for themselves, not the companies or organizations" with which they're affiliated.

Interestingly enough-- and you never would have guessed this in a million billion years-- @stake does a little business with Microsoft; just last June @stake completed a security analysis of .NET versus IBM's competing WebSphere framework-- analysis that was "funded by Microsoft" and which, surprise to end all surprises, concludes that "the .NET framework on Windows Server 2003 better complies with security best practices and requires less effort to secure." Gee, so we've got a Microsoft-funded report that extols the virtues of Microsoft security (which is twelve kinds of suspicious in and of itself), followed by the "sudden departure" of an employee who had spoken out against Microsoft's very lack of security. Suppose there's any connection? (Don't think about it too hard.)

So what we have here, ladles and gentlemints, is a fairly obvious case of someone losing his livelihood for publicly criticizing Microsoft in a non-job context-- and that's what should instill a little extra jolt of paranoia into your days off. Just remember this the next time you say anything doubleplusungood about Big Redmond; they have ways of finding out, and if you're not careful you'll wind up jobless and sitting in Room 101 with a rat caged to your head. Enjoy the weekend!